For her first play, written at the invitation of Simon Delétang, Leïla Slimani draws on Tolstoy's eponymous novel. As throughout her work, she trains her gaze on the impact of violent social structures upon the ideals of her contemporaries.

A celebrated writer, serving as a juror at a trial, recognizes the defendant. He once knew her at the home of his aunts, who had taken her in. He now discovers that they had thrown the orphan out onto the street when she became pregnant. Coming to understand the consequences of the night on which he abused her, he is prepared to do anything to make amends. "The trial acts as a revelation and, ashamed of his privileges and the excesses of his class, he seeks to do good with the fruits of wrongdoing," the author explains. Yet with each visit he makes to the prison, the defendant spurns his help, withholding the forgiveness he seeks: "Although a victim of her sex and her condition, she refuses him that absolution as a final act of freedom and dignity."

This production was born of a partnership between the Comédie-Française and the Théâtre de Lorient, Centre dramatique national directed by Simon Delétang, who recently staged Georg Büchner's The Death of Danton at the Salle Richelieu. The play will receive its world premiere in Lorient in October before touring France and subsequently being presented at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier.
 

Production Comédie-Française,Théâtre de Lorient – CDN 
Coproduction Comédie de Colmar – CDN Grand Est Alsace, Théâtre national de Nice, Théâtre du Jeu de Paume (Aix-en-Provence)

French translation: Édouard Beaux et © Éditions Gallimard